Microarray technology offers great promise to functional genomics research, and potentially transforms the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. However, a standard protocol for microarray data analysis has yet to be established. Many molecular biologists are confused about various data mining techniques and their applications in microarray data. The goal of CAMDA is to initiate a community-wide critical assessment of different techniques used in microarray data analysis. The CAMDA conference was the first to establish a forum for a cross section of researchers to look at a common data set and apply innovative analytical techniques to microarray data.

CAMDA ’00 was held on December 18-19, 2000 at Duke University Medical Center. Attended by 250 biologists, statisticians, computer scientists and mathematicians from 7 countries, the conference truly brought together the major players in this field. At the conference, 14 papers were presented orally, with an additional 16 papers presented as posters. There was very active discussion throughout the conference of the merits and drawbacks of each approach. Each author was called upon to defend his or her approach, and questions from the audience after or during the talk usually prompted lively discussion about the strengths and weakness of each method. Aside from the questions on statistics, discussion ranged from data normalization, data visualization, to pattern recognition. At the end of the conference, attendees voted on a “Best Presentation” and with additional input from the Scientific Committee, the award was given to:

The abstracts of CAMDA’00 were published electronically, including the slide presentations for all posters, and links to download the analytical tools. Selected papers from CAMDA’00 have been peer-viewed and published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, and copies can be ordered on-line.